Hammock Camping and the Elusive Pine Knob Overlook, Forbes State Forest

Why do we call the Pine Knob Overlook "elusive"?  Because we set off in search of it three times on our recent trek, and our first two attempts were long and tiring failures.  We tried hiking in from two separate forest roads--one was the wrong road altogether, and the other was the right road, but we didn't go nearly far enough.  I'd been to the Pine Knob Overlook on two previous occasions.  The first time I went there, I hiked the two miles up to it from the lovely Lick Hollow Picnic Area. The trail is clearly marked and pleasant.  The second time, I drove to the summit of Chestnut Ridge and reached the overlook by car--though the road was very bad.  (Actually, the parking area is about 1/8th of a mile from the actual overlook.)  The road is even worse now.  This time?  This time my friend and I got two false starts and were finally reduced to approaching the overlook from the picnic area--which seems to be the only sure way to get there.  But here it is.  Scramble up onto the rocky outcrops to gaze over the rooftops of Uniontown and points west.  You can see all the way to West Virginia if you look off to the left.  "Look away.  Look away.  Look away, Dixieland."  

As usual, I underestimated the cold on this trip.  I was little-prepared for the fact that spring comes late even to a mountain as low and humble as Chestnut Ridge.  Looking at the leaves up on the ridgetop, you'd think it was late March or early April.  But Quebec Run rarely disappoints, and that's where we made camp for just a brief overnight.

As I've said many a time, there's nothing especially great about Quebec Run.  It's quiet, and wooded, and open to back country camping.  The trees there are tall and graceful.  But it has no sweeping vistas or lofty heights or breathtaking views.  Plus, every dog-owner in Pittsburgh seems to think it's a good place to let their annoying animals run off the leash.  But if you come on a weekday, or early on a weekend--Friday to Saturday instead of Saturday to Sunday--you're likely to find what you're looking for.

And what are you looking for, my friend?  That's the question.  Me?  I'm mostly just looking for a feeling akin to freedom, a comfort that only comes in the open air, a sense of escape that is entirely linked to discovery, and beauty, and silence.  For me, being in the woods is a kind of prayer.  I also came looking to answer a few looming questions about my impending trek across the entire breadth of the Allegheny National Forest.  Questions like, does a hammock with a little roofling offer enough shelter against the insects and the Pennsylvania weather?  

The answer is no, at least not this early in the season.  For this particular trip--as it dipped into the high 30s overnight--the hammock did NOT offer enough shelter.  I missed the cocoon-feeling of a real tent, a space where there was no draft or breeze, an enclosure to separate me from the night.  A tent's walls are an illusion of protection, but they are a powerful illusion...and we all live by illusions.  Illusions can keep us happy and calm.  The hammock did little to give me a sense of my own dedicated space inside the forest, "a home within the wilderness."  But it was sooo much lighter to carry than a tent.  And so, when I cross the Allegheny National Forest, it will be with a hammock instead of a tent.  

A Hidden Cave in South Fayette Township

Aside from a good public school system, South Fayette Township, in Allegheny County, has some of the very worst stuff that suburban life has to offer.  It's not the "leafy suburbs" with elegant homes and tasteful shops, brewpubs and creative restaurants.  No, South Fayette is where sprawling new developments of bland McMansions creep further and further outward each year, devouring what few fields and pastures remain in the county.  These grand-looking-but-cheaply-built homes sell for about half a million, and they're gathered into stifling subdivisions with Anglophilic names like Hastings, Canongate, or the Berkshires...  In the valleys between these vast swaths of suburban sprawl, there are old mining villages, railroad tracks, patches of woods.  A few embattled farms remain, but not for long.

The public park bears a name as uninteresting as you'd expect, and every bit as charmless as its character: Fairview Park.  It's mostly a treeless space with ballfields.  As an anomaly, there is an old cemetery in this park where inmates from the now-demolished Mayview Hospital (a once-notorious insane asylum) are buried in unnamed graves.  That might be the subject of a future post.  I never would have believed that a place so banal would be home to a large, hidden cave.    

My daughter found out about the cave from some friends.  Local teenagers seem to know about it.  The way is very steep and slippery, but someone has tied ropes to the trees to use in getting up and down the hillside.  There's also graffiti, beer cans, and even a little furniture to prove that the cave sees its share of visitors.

The cave is in the valley wall on a tall rise overlooking Chartiers Creek.  From the top of the same hill, you can see the public park in Upper St. Clair--which is the next suburb over.  The mouth opens into a large chamber with tunnels going off in four directions.  The two passages to your left open onto smaller rooms but eventually come to a dead end.  The two passages to your right also open to smaller chambers, but they join up and form a loop back to the main chamber.

There are old mineshafts in this area, and when my daughter told me about the cave, I was pretty sure that it was really just the remains of an old coal mine--which alarmed me a little.  I don't want her going to places like that.  But it's not.  This is a real cave.

This is the main chamber, looking toward the entrance.

If you take the second passage from the right, it leads to the cave's most distant room, where someone has set up a little underground hangout.  There's a folding chair, some cushions, some strings of fairy lights, and many, many old beer cans.

I was afraid that on such a beautiful Saturday in the spring, I'd find teenagers in the cave, but I had the place to myself.

The opening is maybe ten feet high.

But this is standard South Fayette, pictured here: miles and miles and MILES of green lawns and newly-planted trees.  It's not the kind of place where you'd expect to go spelunking.  (Then again, South Fayette is home to a few ancient farmhouses, one of which serves as both the bane of my worldly existence as well as a beloved, cantankerous character in the drama of my life.)

To find the cave, go to Fairview Park in South Fayette Township, then walk up to these water towers from the parking lot by the baseball field.  Turn left at the towers and find two mowed, grassy trails.  The leftward trail has a sign announcing that it leads to a leash-free zone for dogs.  There are SO MANY reasons not to take that trail: 1) other people's dogs are annoying, and 2) it's the wrong way.  Take the trail to the right and then take another right where a smaller trail leads into the woods.  

You'll come to a spot where an ersatz bridge crosses a shallow culvert.  It's just two narrow logs laid across a dip in the trail.  Very shortly after this "bridge," you'll see a steep scrambling trail off to the right; this leads to the cave.  There's pink graffiti on a tree at the spot where you begin your downward climb---pictured here.  The way wends between tree roots and rocks.  Be careful!  It's very steep and slippery.  You'll need to use the two ropes that someone has tied to the trees--both descending and ascending.  I believe that if you take the same trail further downhill past the cave, it leads to the banks of Chartiers Creek.